The Movement Alliance hosts special performance for breast cancer care

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The Movement Alliance Dance Theatre Company (TMA) will present a brief and intimate evening of dance and live music with Jeff Thorsby and Anne Shisko at TMA School/HBC in partnership with Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital (SNMH). Hospital staff, who will answer questions and provide information about its breast health and breast cancer services.

TMA will feature “Tribute” (2005), which was originally choreographed by director Lovie Bucknell in honor of her Grandmother “Tutu,” Jean Bucknell, who passed away from breast cancer in 1991. As the creative (and somewhat therapeutic) process began, the choreographer realized that Tribute could be for anyone that the dancers know: a relative or friend who was struggling with breast cancer; in the process the dancers added a great deal to the original work. Since the premier piece was choreographed seven years ago, Bucknell’s mother, Jacquie Bucknell, has battled breast cancer twice. She is now cancer free. So Lovie Bucknell wanted to add a second part to the original piece, focused more on the sad and frustrating elements of the disease. Part two was recently created and reflects the comfort and celebration that Bucknell finds in the advances in medicine, the local resources in our community and the increasing survival rates.

Bucknell said she found two of the most positive people that she knows, Thorsby and his wife, Shisko, to add to the piece with music. When they agreed to compose the movement for the second half of the suite, Bucknell felt incredibly thankful, she said.

TMA celebrates 10 years together this year and have had the pleasure of working with Thorsby in the past as well, a local artist and musician who has recently moved back up to Nevada County from San Francisco. Thorsby also plays in the band, Physical Education, which is currently recording its first album, as well as serving on the board of directors locally for St. Joseph’s Cultural Center in Grass Valley.